


Forever Luminous

by rinskiroo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 10:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14078649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: Poe tries to deal with the loss none of us were prepared for.





	Forever Luminous

**Author's Note:**

> I miss you everyday, Carrie.

Poe thinks that the light should be easiest to see when it’s dark.  That it should be a beacon, shining, guiding him home.  When it’s the darkest, the pinpricks of light should be like stars.  Even the smallest of things should bring hope.

When Leia dies, it’s like every star in every system across the entire universe has burned out.

She had called them luminous, all of them, but every face he sees is dark and drawn.  A great shadow has settled over all things, like she’d taken all the lights with her.  The light flees, attached to her train, trapped in her hair and her eyes.  It can’t leave her because she is brilliance and without her there wasn’t the reason to exist here in this barren plane of existence.

It feels traitorous to say it, but somehow the pain is worse than when his own mother died.  Kids bounce back quick, he had always heard people say.  She had birthed him, loved him, taught him to fly, but he had only known her for such a short time.  Leia, he had known her, known of her, his whole life.  And she had known him—knew his parents, kept tabs on him as a boy, as a young pilot in the Republic, and then recruited him outright.  She had taught him so much—lessons he thought he didn’t need, things he wasn’t ready to learn.

He has to learn them all now.  She’s gone, and she’s not coming back.

Poe knows that she wouldn’t want him to grieve this way—to shut out the world and despair.  Leia would demand a celebration.  For her life was full of a great many things, not all good, but all should be celebrated.  He knows that the best way to honor her is to keep fighting, keep working towards what she believed in.  But it all seems insurmountable with her gone.

_One step at a time._

Poe shakes his head at the voice echoing in his mind.  There are too many steps.  He has to take them three and four at a time or else it’s going to bury him.  He has no idea how she did it—built this Resistance, rallied allies to her side, convinced relatively stable corporations and governments of the true danger of the First Order enough to secure their support.  He just wants to shake every person that tells him no.  How can they stand by with the galaxy literally collapsing around them?

He wishes desperately that she was here—that any of them were here.  Leia, Han, Luke, Ackbar, Stratura, his mother, even Holdo.  He feels so desperately alone, even if rationally he knows he is anything but.

They’ve gathered at the birthplace of hope.  Not this exact spot, but it’s only a few klicks away, poking out above the canopy of trees.  So significant was that battle, they changed the way the galaxy tracked time to revolve around it.  She was there, at the center of it all.  The balance now tilted with her gone.

“I’ll be out later,”  Poe tells the droid that’s come to try and pull him from his solitude.  He’ll be expected to give a speech, rally them all to keep fighting because that’s what she would want.  He isn’t quite up to it yet, would rather fiddle with this old fighter in the darkened hangar.

BB-8 doesn’t take to his master’s obstinance very well, especially when he’s supposed to be their leader.  He rolls back and forth into Poe’s calf, demanding he come and join the celebration.

“I’m not really in a party mood—damnit!”  Poe yelps and yanks his hand out of the part of the engine he’s been fiddling with.  He sucks on the tip of his finger and sighs as BB-8 recoils back, his dome drooping as he heads back out of the hangar.  “Buddy… I’m sorry.  I wasn’t yelling at you.”

But the droid’s already gone, off to find better company.

_It_ _’s okay to grieve in your own way, but you can’t lose yourself in it._

Poe lets out an angry huff and tosses the spanner to the ground.  He’s ready to snap back at this imaginary voice, but figures he’d look pretty crazy shouting at nothing.

Light from the Yavin star streams in through the hangar door left cracked open, picking up dust particles.  It brings with it the hum of music and the sound of laughter.

_The only thing worse than being hurt is everyone knowing that you_ _’re hurt._ *

Poe rolls his eyes and nearly laughs.  Inwardly, he sarcastically wonders how long this haunting will last.  He imagines she’d respond with however long it took him to get his head out of his ass.  He knows it would be what she wants—to go out there and be with his friends, his family, not sequestered away feeling sorry for himself.  It’s not much in his nature, either, but he’s already lost one mother, and wasn’t prepared to lose a second.

Slowly, his feet take him to the sunlit opening.  He leans his shoulder on the door and watches as what’s left of her Resistance celebrates her life.  They’re blowing bubbles and throwing handfuls of confetti at each other.  Anyone with hair long enough has it propped up into matching buns.  He spots Rey and Rose twirling each other around, dancing the way Leia often did.

It’s true, perhaps, that the reason he can’t face them is because of what he’s supposed to be.  He doesn’t much feel like pretending, and how effective of a leader can he be while he weeps?  Poe remembers, though, that Leia always wore her emotions out in the open.  She showed them anger, and sadness, and laughter, and savored openly all of their successes.  Leia was authentic, as real as the sun and just as radiant.

With a sigh, and the feel of something pushing him out of the dark hangar, Poe puts one foot in front of the other.  The sun’s dipping off into the horizon as he makes his way over to the party.  The light is leaving them for the day and Poe tries not to make melancholic comparisons.

He falls into a chair and lets his father fuss over him and his friends.  Eats too much food and shares in everyone’s stories.  Chewie has great stories from the Rebellion.  Snap has ones from early in the Resistance.  Poe tells the one about how she recruited him—how he thought was going to get arrested and court-martialed, but instead, joined up with the best people he’d ever known.  He tells them about the time she’d grounded him, and all the times he’d tried to explain away some stupid thing he did, but how she always saw right through his cocksure attitude.

By the time the stars come out, he’s smiling, laughing.  Barely even takes note of the change until his eyes catch a shooting star arc across the sky.  Maybe it’s a piece of space trash falling through the atmosphere, or a passing asteroid.  Or maybe its her, reminding him that no one is ever truly gone.

**Author's Note:**

> * This is a Carrie quote from "Postcards from the Edge."
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://rinskiroo.tumblr.com/).


End file.
